European Union parliamentary delegation who visited Tehran recently, in a non-diplomatic move, secretly met with two Iranian dissidents who had been convicted to terms of prison because of involvement in anti-government riots in Teharn following 2009 presidential elcetions.The meeting was held in the Greek Embassy in Tehran.

According to Foreign ministry Website, the Greek charge dˈ affaires was summoned and was told that Iran is dissatified with the EU parliamentary delegation move.

The charge dˈ affaires was also told that Tehran sees the act as ˈcontrary to goodwillˈ and that Iranian Embassy in Brusseles had warned the European delegation about such a meeting prior to their visit to Tehran.

It took a war in 1973 and a decade of negotiations to restore Sinai to Egypt. When it was returned to Egyptian sovereignty 1983 the peninsula looked forward to the implementation of development plans that would make it a land of peace and prosperity for its inhabitants and those around it. Unfortunately, the next two decades (1984-2004) witnessed little tangible progress apart from the tourist resorts that emerged in the south and helped turn that area into one of the world’s prime tourist destinations. Northern Sinai remained remote from the march of economic development, in spite of the fact that, with its long stretches of sandy beaches along the Mediterranean coastline, it is endowed with natural beauty as well as potential for industry.

Having remained fallow for so long Sinai entered an even grimmer period ushered in by terrorist attacks against southern resorts in 2004. The close of 2013 marks the end of a decade of terrorism and, hopefully, the beginning of the implementation of long-delayed plans to turn Sinai into the prosperous and thriving environment first envisaged 40 years ago.

A vicious war between the army and extremist factions and jihadist militias, now in its fifth month, has seen progress made towards dismantling the terrorist structure in Sinai. But it is important to bear in mind that the crisis runs deep. There has been cross-border infiltration which has largely been checked through the closure of most of the Sinai-Gaza tunnels. Now many leaders of takfiri factions have been apprehended, and weapon arsenals have been captured. In the wake of what Sinai activist Ghazi Abu Farraj describes as “the clean-up operation after precision surgery” there has to be a comprehensive plan capable of immunising the area from any resurgence in terrorism.

Militant field leaders like Abu Mounir, Kamal Allam and Shadi Al-Maniei, and ideological organisational leaders such as Abu Faisal, founder of the Sharia Courts in northern Sinai, are not the only players. In fact, much of the action takes place off-stage. Some of the actors ate known, others not. Arab and other countries are involved, some through their intelligence agencies, others by means of groups and organisations that they fund. There are jihadist ideologues who pronounce fatwas from behind bars, such as Abu Mohamed Al-Maqdisi in Jordan, and Wahhabi takfiri sheikhs who issue similar edicts, such as Abi Al-Munzir Al-Shanqiti, author of a lengthy tract calling on jihadists in Sinai to take up arms against the Egyptian army.

Other issues closely intertwine with events in Sinai. Extremists have used the Palestinian crisis and the sustained blockade of Gaza to legitimise aggression against Egypt. Hamas is reeling. The commercial traffic through the network of tunnels between the Sinai-Gaza border engaged some 50,000 workers and was such a major source of revenue for the Hamas government, so much so an entire ministry was set up to oversee the tunnels. That Hamas now feels beleaguered on this front suggests two possible scenarios. The first is that it has become a witting or unwitting tool for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as an organisational and ideological resource supported by the International Muslim Brotherhood and with the primary function of creating trouble for post-30 June Egypt. There is strong evidence to support this. In the second half of 2013 dozens of Palestinians affiliated with Hamas’s Ezzeddin Al-Qassam brigades were apprehended in Sinai and security forces unearthed large quantities of arms, ammunition and explosives traced back to the brigades. There is another dimension to this scenario. It became clear as the Egyptian army dismantled the tunnel network and tightened border security that the Egyptian authorities were aware of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hand in the matter. A clear message was intended: Egypt’s borders are no longer available for anti-Egyptian propaganda or for activities that undermine Egyptian sovereignty.

Mohamed Gomaa, a researcher at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, explains the second scenario. Hamas, he says, realised it could not afford to continue to lend itself to the designs of the first scenario, having concluded it would ultimately backfire, drawing fire into Gaza which would ignite the political/economic pressure and lead to a redrawing of the Gazan political map in which Hamas would be marginalised.

Eliminating terrorism in Sinai entails drying up all sources of arms. Though the supply is considerably reduced, some still find a way into the peninsula. There are weapons coming from Sudan where, according to the prominent political activist Al-Mahjoub Abdel-Salem, the regime is hostile to the developments in Egypt since 30 June. Egyptian military expert Gamal Mazloum points another supply line across the Red Sea from Yemen where Qaeda activities are flourishing.

The largest weapons tributary, however, flows from Libya, currently the greatest external threat to Egyptian national security due to the proliferation of extremist groups and a weak central government. Many of these factions fall under the jihadist Salafist umbrella and have bases near the Libyan border with Egypt. According to Egyptian security sources and Libyan affairs expert Ali Saleh, there are four arms smuggling routes from Libya into Egypt, from the maritime route and an overland coastal route in the north to two desert routes in the south. In spite of frequent reports that Cairo and Tripoli are working together to curb this traffic Egyptian military reports indicate that breaches of Egypt’s western border continue.

It is not just the weapons from Sudan, Yemen and Libya that flow into Sinai. Terrorists have also begun to flock to the peninsula in order to wage holy war. The majority of leaders of the recent wave of armed assaults have been foreign jihadists, most of them trained in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They then passed on training to their local affiliates in Sinai. There are recent arrivals from Syria to, both Egyptian and foreign. Any effective anti-terrorist programme must take this into account. Cross border cooperation is required to dismantle an international terrorist network which, like organised crime, has tentacles everywhere. The assassination of Major Mohamed Abu Shaqara, whose whereabouts had been leaked to a terrorist cell, and of Major Mohamed Mabrouk, who was to be a key prosecution witness in the espionage case against Mohamed Morsi, both point to the trans-national nature of this network.

Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis initially claimed responsibility for the assassination, followed by Furqan Brigades. Both are members of the Jihadist Shura Council in Sinai. Security experts believe that these groups are actually covering for others outside Sinai. The backgrounds of suspects arrested in connection with the assassinations are very different to those of members of Sinai groups. The suspects come from wealthy families and had university educations whereas the vast majority of members of Sinai groups come from poor families and have little more than elementary school education and sometimes not even that.

The deadliest terrorist attacks in Sinai in 2013 were the second Rafah massacre in August in which 25 soldiers died and the bombing of an army bus in November which killed 11 soldiers. These were well organised operations, terrorist expert Lieutenant Colonel Khaled Okasha told Al-Ahram Weekly, which underscored the relationship between the perpetrators in Sinai and the International Muslim Brotherhood. This International Muslim Brotherhood provides funding and has encouraged the export of terror outside of Sinai. These exports include the attack against the church in Warraq, the attempted assassination of Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim in September and the bombing of a satellite station in Maadi in October.

July, a period of intermittent attacks, was the prelude to a major confrontation. August and November brought peaks in terrorist attacks against police and military installations and personnel, October saw a relative lull in violence. In October and November the army made major advances in the battle against terrorism, arresting many of Sinai’s jihadist takfiri leaders.

There has been a qualitative improvement in security for Sinai residents, says Mohamed Hamad, son of a local Sinai chief. The area from Beir Al-Abad to Al-Masaid at the entrance to Arish, once a trouble spot, is safe during the day and relatively safe at night, he says. The situation becomes more tense the further one moves towards Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, where weapons still abound.

Military affairs expert General Talaat Muslim told the Weekly that the military’s overriding aim in Sinai is to restore security. The army does not play a political role in the peninsula but is following its traditional function which is to safeguard and eliminate all threats to national security. “We are engaged in a military battle and in any battle there will be losses,” he says. “However, the level of losses has remained within acceptable limits and is far less than was anticipated at the outset of operations.”

Members of the Sowarka and Tarabeen tribes complain of tit-for-tat violence between the army and terrorist groups and its effect on innocent people. They say homes have been destroyed and civilians targeted on the basis of a vague suspicions. A distinction must be drawn between those who practise violence and others, a member of the Tarabeen tribe told the Weekly. He stressed that harming the innocent breeds vengeance.

“We do not condemn the army for moving against any terrorist target. In fact we cooperate with it. But sometimes the situation gets out of control. Perhaps, too, they should do more to protect people threatened by the takfiris. Twelve sheikhs from the tribe were killed because they cooperated with the security agencies. The authorities have ignore this and not one of their families received compensation,” he says.

“There is security cooperation with neighbouring countries,” said the same source, “not least Israel. Israel also has agents and cells in Sinai that are playing a role in events and gathering intelligence in a very professional way. But we have to keep watch on those who are with us in case they turn against us. We cannot trust any party. Hamas is just like Israel in this matter. I am worried about Hamas because it is the Muslim Brotherhood’s arm playing from the outside while Muslim Brotherhood elements in Sinai confine themselves, superficially, to a political role.”

Comprehensive development is the only long term solution to any resurgence of the terrorist virus. Yet, says Salah Gawdat who has conducted many economic and technical studies on Sinai, though a third of a century has passed since Egypt won the peninsula back from Israel, two regimes have come and gone, a third is currently in power and a fourth is on its way, the development process has yet to extend beyond six per cent of the area of Sinai. This is despite the fact that Sinai contains 48 per cent of Egypt’s mineral wealth. The problem of Sinai’s underdevelopment could be solved, he says, by a realistic investment plan and a massive population transfer of around four million people from the Nile Valley. There would be development of the coastlines and land reclamation. Agricultural expansion would see an increase in olive cultivation and the introduction of new strains of wheat. These activities would change the face of Sinai though for them to happen, the state as a whole must return to Sinai, not just the army.

There are already around 163 members in the Lebanese Regional Council who were elected by Fatah members from camps in Sidon, Tyre, the Bekaa Valley and north Lebanon.
Strong Fatah figures have been competing for positions in the general secretariat. Among them are incumbent General Secretary Rifaat Shanaa, Toufic Abdullah, the son in law of Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Dabbour and Riad Abu al-Aynayn the son of Central Committee member Sultan Abul Aynayn – formerly Fatah’s most senior official in Lebanon, who now resides in Ramallah.
The conference was attended by Azzam al-Ahmad, Central Committee member for Ramallah, who is responsible for Lebanon, and Jamal Moheissen, head of Fatah’s organizational official for foreign branches.
Also attending were Samir al-Rifaei, Fatah’s representative in Syria, in addition to officials and guests from other Palestinian factions, such as Hamas’ representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka.
The conference was inaugurated by a number of speeches that stressed the importance of safeguarding the Palestinian cause and emphasizing the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The conference was held amid strict security measures and guests were not allowed to bring their mobile phones inside the embassy and were thoroughly searched before entering.
“We should shoulder our responsibilities during these tough times and protect the camps,” Ahmad said during the conference. “We know that the situation in Syria is difficult and that we couldn’t protect the Yarmouk camp, but ongoing efforts are relentless to protect what is left of it, so the residents of the camp can return to their homes.”
“We don’t want to replay the tragedy of what happened in Nahr al-Bared. It is a painful memory,” he said, referring to fighting in 2007 between the Army and militants from the Islamist group Fatah al-Islam in the northern Lebanese refugee camp. Four hundred people were killed in the fighting, including 160 military personnel, and the camp was nearly destroyed.
“Until today we have safeguarded our unity and our camps thanks to the cooperation among all Palestinian factions,” he added. “We reject all forms of fanaticism from some Palestinians. We have no conflict with any Palestinian faction in the camp, but we won’t allow, under any pretext whether religious or any other, to drag the camp to a place that doesn’t serve the Palestinian agenda and doesn’t serve Lebanon.”
“Developing the mechanisms and the structure of Fatah in Lebanon … is ongoing. And the conference is being held today to revive the movement and elect a leader for the organizational work of the Fatah Movement in Lebanon,” Ahmad told The Daily Star.
“This conference is being held to stress Fatah’s commitment to implementing the party’s internal regulations and reinforcing the democratic work of the party, so that we are able to confront the challenges facing the Palestinian cause in general and the Lebanese context in particular,” he added.
The conference comes in the wake of a series of security incidents in the southern Lebanese camp of Ain al-Hilweh, during which several bodyguards for Fatah official Mahmoud Issa were targeted by gunfire.
Issa, known as Lino, was demoted by Fatah in October after a group of officers affiliated with him accused the movement of corruption.
Referring to his decision to discipline the prominent official, Ahmad said: “ Fatah has no room for those who don’t abide by its rules, discipline, policies and the instructions of its leaders, not in Lebanon nor in Palestine.”
Rumors have also been circulating linking certain refugee camps, notably Burj al-Barajneh and Ain al-Hilweh, to the bombs and security incidents that have rocked Lebanon in the past few months, especially after the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Palestinian Salafist movement with links to Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the blasts outside the Iranian Embassy in November.
The attack in the Bir Hasan neighborhood of Beirut killed 30 people and wounded scores more.

Declaring the mourning period, for what it described as “a cowardly act”, the prime minister’s office said that the 24 December celebrations of Independence Day on Tuesday would be postponed. Also put off has been the ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the National Oil Company’s new Benghazi headquarters, an event of considerable significance for people living in the east of the country. No date new date was given for either event.
In a statement issued this morning, Ali Zeidan renewed his government’s determination to intensify all efforts and “stand as one in the face of such acts and those who are behind them”.
The government said that “this cowardly act” was an attempt to obstruct the strenuous efforts by the national military personnel and Saiqa Special Forces to maintain security and protect the civilians “especially in Benghazi”. To this end, the government said that it would provide the police and army with everything it needed to perform their duties.

“In three days, the former SSLA fighters will be in Bentiu town. Civilians and UN staff are advised to leave the town because the former SSLA forces will use heavy artillery to dislodge Maj. Gen. James Koang if he doesn’t change his mind before the deadline given to him”, the SSLA said in a statement extended to Sudan Tribune on Sunday.
The fourth division commander of the South Sudanese army (SPLA) in Unity state (SPLA) declared himself military governor of Unity state on Saturday after chasing out legitimate governor Joseph Nguen Monytuil.
Monytuil, who fled the fighting on Friday night to Wangkai, west of Bentiu, reported himself on Sunday to Western Bahr el Ghazal state capital Wau, officially confirming that the area had fallen under rebel control.
According to the statement, which bears the name of spokesperson Gordon Buay, Koang is in command of 600 forces stationed in Bentiu town, while the rest of the SPLA’s forces in Mayom, Parieng and other counties remain loyal to the government.
The SSLA categorically denied that Unity state was under the control of forces loyal to former vice-president Riek Machar.
“We want to inform the media that Riek Machar was lying that Unity State is under his control. Only the town Bentiu is under Maj. Gen. James Koang who commanded only 600 forces. The rest of SPLA forces outside the town are not with him”, the statement said.
Meanwhile, Koang has announced a new interim administration comprising of six state supervisors and seven county commissioners, a day after he defected to the opposition forces and assumed governorship of the oil-rich region.
An estimated 500 people have died after clashes erupted in Juba on 15 December between rival factions of the presidential guards, in what the government claimed was an attempted coup instigated by Machar and his supporters – accusations he denied.
The fighting followed deepening political tensions within the ruling SPLM after president Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, sacked his entire cabinet in July, including Machar, who hails from the Nuer tribe.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other sources have reported that some of the fighting in Juba targeted citizens on the basis of their tribe, with the conflict spilling over to other regions, including Jonglei and Unity states.
The SSLA claims that many officers who had defected from the SPLA ranks were acting out of emotion after learning that members of their tribe were killed in the Juba unrest and not necessarily because they supported Machar.
The group also claims that Machar has failed to win the support of the Nuer political and military elite.

Police and military forces were securing Tripoli’s petrol stations this evening at the request of the Prime Minister’s Office, after vandalism forced the closure of ten stations.
Spokesman for Tripoli Security Directorate Essam Naas told the Libya Herald that the Prime Minster’s Office had agreed, on the advice of the Directorate, to deploy security forces across the capital following the sabotage of petrol stations.
These instances of vandalism reignited fears that the petrol crisis, which ended three days ago, might return. However, various officials have spoken out on television news programmes and social media networks stressing that there is no fuel shortage and that the current problems have been caused solely by vandals.
At one petrol station in Hadba Toul, the manager was forced to close after several armed men in plain clothes stole the petrol pumps, saying this was for the station’s protection. While police have arrived at some petrol stations, the situation on the streets remained tense as bystanders questioned why security forces had relinquished control of the fuelling stations so soon.

Iranˈs air exercises over the Persian Gulf waters, in southern Iran, started Friday moring.

The two-day exercises are the main and second phase of a large-scale drill codenamed Fada’eeyan-e Harim-e Velayat 4 (Defenders of Velayat Sanctuary 4).Units from all the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force bases are taking part in the three-phase drills.

The military exercises are part of annual exercises aimed at testing indigenous air defense systems, improving the units’ combat readiness and displaying the country’s military might and achievements.

The drill seeks to send a message of peace, friendship and security to regional countries.

Elmoslemany’s argument plays into a common narrative of victimization by the Egyptian political establishment, which blames the West for the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the instability that followed after the first democratically-elected president was removed from office by the military.

The lecture was attended by a number of Arab ambassadors, students and professors, where Elmoslemany spoke about his vision for the future after the 30 June revolution, adding that Egypt’s goal is to reinstate the “Egyptian civilizational project.”

After the lecture, the head of the Arabic Department asked Laura Sitaro to translate Elmoslemany’s book “The Great Egypt” into Romanian.

Below is an English translation provided by Egypt Independent of Elmoslemany’s lecture:

Dear students and professors,

I am happy to meet you here today at the prestigious University of Bucharest and I wish you success in your lives and in your education.

Your studying of the Arabic language and literature was the motivation for me to meet the generation of young European researchers who want to learn about us, our visions and our thoughts.

I am coming to you from Cairo, the capital of human civilization, and I humbly know that a large part of the history of the world was formulated in my country. And I am aware that the capital of human civilization has a new appointment with history.

After decades of stagnation and decline, the Egyptians are now trying to resume the journey of civilization that has been stalled by economic and political missteps.

You may have seen the millions of Egyptians that came out in the revolution of 25 January 2011 and the 30 million that came out in the revolution of 30 June 2013.

You may have noticed that they were objecting that the history and the civilization of their homeland had been broken.

Their demands and pains varied, but they all met on the path of resuming the Egyptian civilizational project.

Our country looks to the future with its past heritage and great potential of the present. It looks to the world with deep belief in justice and peace.

Egypt gave the world the notion of a state, a capital, an army and a border long before humanity knew of the notions of belonging and discipline. Also, Egypt dealt with many civilizations in Asia, Africa and Europe.

While Cairo is the pylon of the Great Pyramids, Luxor and Karnak are the center of one third of the worlds ancient artifacts, and Alexandria is the home of the oldest library in history, other Egyptian cities have been the scene of many Christian and Islamic contributions to civilization since the rapprochement with the Greek and the Roman civilizations.

Today, about 90 million Egyptians want to restore that civilization and march toward the future with determination.

Egyptian intellectuals have for two hundred years been linking our past civilization to the modern one. And great scholars of Islam have been providing the true nature of religion. Yet some orientalists and extremists have tried to provide another face of Islam; one that we know nothing of.

Today, we are fighting a tough battle with extremists who are supported from abroad with money and weapons. We are surprised to see Western institutions supporting religious extremism in the Arab world. Since those institutions do not work for the benefit of Islam and Muslims, we look angrily to them. They seek modernity for their countries and extremism and chaos for ours.

They betray the principles they want exclusively for themselves and not others, in a new wave of colonialism whose goal is to establish self- retardation and occupy emerging peoples with events out of our times.

Dear students and professors, You are lucky to study the Arabic language and literature amid the Arab Spring that has veered into an autumn and returned to spring again. Your generation has seen the spring of our political life and will surely see the spring of our civilization soon.

We know that you want to build a glorious future for your country, and we see your steps towards construction and development after years of difficulties and challenges.

We look to our sister Romania with pride and appreciation. We wish you success and progress. And we hope the Egyptian and Romanian peoples support human aspirations for peace and prosperity.

Dear students and professors

I was happy to participate two days ago in the opening of the Arab European Roman Cultural Center which I hope will be a bridge for exchange of knowledge and cultural dialogue.

Be assured that you have true friends in Egypt. Be sure that we are sincerely determined to face unfair and miserable policies and ideas of today’s world.

Egypt and Romania can work together to support freedom and equality and consolidate bilateral bonds of friendship.

A tribute to your university and the Arabic Language Department, and to you and the students coming after you.

Witnesses said that the city of Juba looks like large military barracks now that the airport has closed, restrictions have been imposed on phone calls and troops have been deployed in the streets and at established checkpoints. According to reports, civilians have been provoked, as raids are being carried out on houses suspected by the authorities of harboring individuals involved in the coup attempt.

In a phone call with Al-Hayat, a prominent oppositionist in Juba said the tension in the capital has moved to other states, including those plagued by insurgency and others that are relatively calm. The same source did not rule out the possibility that clashes could escalate as a result of the tribal polarization within the army between members loyal to Salva Kiir and supporters of former Vice President Machar.

Makor Koriyoun, South Sudanese minister of state for health affairs, said at least 26 people have died and 140 have been hospitalized in the Juba clashes since Sunday. Medical sources in Juba’s main hospital, however, said 66 soldiers had been killed.

An official from the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) told Al-Hayat that the death toll has exceeded a hundred soldiers and civilians, with 300 people injured.

Hilde Johnson, the UN’s special representative for South Sudan, urged the fighting parties to avoid ethnic and tribal violence, reiterating the necessity of “security forces exercising restraint.”

In a statement, Johnson noted that around 10,000 civilians had taken refuge in UN compounds in Juba, while Toby Lanzer, the UN deputy special representative of the secretary-general in South Sudan, said that 13,000 people have sought shelter in UN centers.

South Sudan’s Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said that security forces were currently working to get rid of the remnants of the supporters of former Vice President Machar.

Rebecca Garang, widow of the late People’s Liberation Army leader John Garang, said that what happened “was nothing more than a split within the army.” She accused Salva Kiir of “driving the south toward a new dictatorship.” In a statement given from her residence in Juba, she said that Machar was “a democratic man who could never think of a coup.”

The conflict called to mind the split within the People’s Liberation Army in the 1990s, when Machar led a dissident group that fought battles against supporters of Garang. Machar hails from the Nuer tribe, which is a rival of Salva Kiir’s Dinka tribe, which is in control of South Sudan.